Radeon R9 280 vs Radeon R9 290

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 290, which has a GPU core clock speed of 800 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1250 MHz through a 512-bit bus. It also features 2560 SPUs, 160 Texture Address Units, and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Benchmarks

These are real-world performance benchmarks that were submitted by Hardware Compare users. The scores seen here are the average of all benchmarks submitted for each respective test and hardware.

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

Radeon R9 290		9876 points
Radeon R9 280		7961 points
	Difference: 1915 (24%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 290		283 Sol/s
Radeon R9 280		183 Sol/s
	Difference: 100 (55%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 290		29 Mh/s
Radeon R9 280		22 Mh/s
	Difference: 7 (32%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 280		250 Watts
Radeon R9 290		300 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (20%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 290 will be 33% quicker than the Radeon R9 280 in general, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		320000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 280		240000 MB/sec
	Difference: 80000 (33%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 will be much (about 22%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon R9 280. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		128000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 280		104496 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 23504 (22%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 290 is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		51200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 280		29856 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 21344 (71%)

Please note that the above 'benchmarks' are all just theoretical - the results were calculated based on the card's specifications, and real-world performance may (and probably will) vary at least a bit.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.